Rail Life, In Montana

JEAN ALLEN Advice and Dissent

The View From The Vintage Rail Cars Is Filled With Scenery (but No Grizzlies).

March 9, 1997|JEAN ALLEN

Q. I know from reading your columns that you like rail travel. I have been trying to learn more about a train for tourists that runs through Montana in summer. I plan to be in that area this year. Any information will be welcomed. _ Jack S., Fort Lauderdale.

A. If you would like to ride in comfortable vintage rail cars through scenic areas of Montana and into northern Idaho, book the Montana Daylight Train, running from June through September.

I'm always looking for little regional trains to ride. Most are day trips or last only an hour or so. This one lasted two days. I took the Montana Daylight last September on its 545-mile run that began near Billings, stopped for the night in Missoula, and ended in Sandpoint, Idaho. The brochure promised ``forested valleys ruled by bald eagles and grizzly bears, towering granite peaks and tumbling streams brimming with trout.''

We never did see a grizzly bear, but there was a bald eagle or two and other wildlife, on a route that's pretty but not spectacularly scenic. Still, there's usually something worth seeing through the big domed windows (washed every day) of the observation car. Seventy-two percent of the run is along rivers.

I was with a small group that started the trip with a night at the Northern Hotel in Billings, an old Northern Pacific Railroad hotel that falls short in the ``vintage charm'' category. Boarding the train at nearby Laurel next morning, we started our run with the Yellowstone River on one side of the tracks and Interstate 90 on the other. There is no daytime speed limit in Montana, so cars on the interstate passed in a blur. We rode along the Yellowstone for 100 miles or so, and later joined the Flathead River, which flows out of Glacier National Park and into a pretty stream called Clark's Ford River near Paradise (a corruption of Pair of Dice).

There were beautiful stretches, especially on the second day, in the Mission and Bitterroot mountains, when high dark pines covered slopes and the ``towering granite peaks'' appeared as the brochures promised. We crossed the Continental Divide through the Mullan Tunnel and rode through the 3,654-foot Bozeman tunnel a mile above sea level.

Often, though, there was little to see, especially during frequent long stops while the train was pulled to a siding to yield the right-of-way to freight trains whose company owns the tracks. An average of 26 freight trains a day use those tracks.

Not much happens in Montana. We saw a few one-street towns, some vintage motels, a lot of TV dishes, and many people living in house trailers on regular town lots. An example of a big event in Montana happens in Reedpoint, population 120, during the annual Sheep Drive. Some 5,000 out-of-towners come to see 1,500 sheep herded down the main street in this ``Sheep Drive Capital of the World.'' There's a parade and a Little Bo Peep contest. Local resident Tony Robbins, dressed in drag, was named Miss Sheep Drive 1996.

At Missoula, where we spent the night, we admired the beautiful golden-red brick at the old Burlington and Northern railroad station (now a restaurant and micro-brewery). This brick was headed for Tacoma, Wash., in the 1880s to build a grand hotel. Then the stock market crashed and the brick got no farther than Missoula, where it was dumped and later salvaged to build the depot and several other buildings near the tracks.

The following afternoon we pulled into Sandpoint, end of the line and the trip. The town, in Idaho's northern panhandle lake region, has its own railroad heritage, so much so that rail buffs ask for rooms on the noisy track side at the Edgewater Inn, instead of on the quiet side that faces pretty Lake Pend Oreile (pronounced Ponderay), so they can watch the trains. The Union Pacific funnels through Sandpoint on runs between Spokane and the Canadian border. The Burlington Northern, Union Pacific and Montana Rail Link all use the transfer yard two miles from Sandpoint daily.

The trip was memorable as much for the train as for the scenery. There are three levels of service, Coach, Big Sky (with an observation car) and Deluxe, in a restored private car. Deluxe passengers have staterooms, sleep aboard, and are served all meals. Big Sky, my level, includes continental breakfasts, full lunches in a dining car, and hotels overnight. Coach class gets box lunches.

Possible packages can also include side trips by bus to nearby Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and to the lake resort at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

All the cars have histories, and we rode in Dome Coach 9410, called the Columbia River, built in 1955 for service on the Great Northern's Empire Builder, a train still operated by Amtrak between Seattle and Chicago.

The train carries up to 242 passengers across Montana's Big Sky country. Its seven cars are historic coaches refurbished in luxurious turn of the century style, with mahogany and oak furnishings and handcrafted fittings.

During the glory days of American railroading, this route was built in 1883 by the Northern Pacific Railway as part of first northern transcontinental railway. It was built as a link from Duluth on the Great Lakes to Portland, Ore. The Burlington Pacific ran it from 1970 until 1987, when big segments of the line were abandoned. But the tracks remained as part of a 999-year bond arrangement and are used as a freight line, except for the Montana Daylight, operated by Rail Views Ltd.